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WoW.com's Guide to Blood-Queen Lana'thel

Michael Gray
Updated ·6 min read

Get bitten. Savor the succulent flavor of your raid friends once every 50 seconds. Do crazy, sick DPS. Oh, and stay alive, 'cause this lady's got a lot of health.

The Blood-Queen is a fairly unique encounter. The gimmick here is that Lana'thel will bite one of your raid members seconds after the fight begins. Doing so will turn that player into a vampire. Before too much longer, that person will feed on another, and then that person will need to feed. This horrible pattern of events will continue until everyone's a vampire.

Like many other boss fights, Blood-Queen Lana'thel has an attack that can cause you to damage nearby allies. The range for this fight is 6 yards, but doing a range check for 10 yards is a good way to be safe -- there's plenty of room. Because of the need for distance, the best positioning for a caster is somewhere in the outer circle of the room.

Table of contents

Composition


Two tanks in 10-man, three tanks in 25-man. In 10-man, you can get by with only two healers if you have some hybrids who can help out while she's in the air (or, of course, if your healers are so banging that they won't need help). You want five to six healers in 25-man.

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General strategy


Lana'thel is a DPS race, since she has a very large health pool and a relatively short enrage timer. (It'd be a short rage timer for any other fight.) Without some help, you will not kill her in time. Your help comes in the form of Essence of the Blood Queen. Each time she uses Vampiric Bite on a target, he or she will take some damage and become a vampire. For around a minute, the vampire will do double damage before getting the debuff called Frenzied Bloodthirst. When you become frenzied, you will have only a single button -- another Vampiric Bite. You must bite someone else. You cannot bite someone who is already a vampire. If you fail to bite someone, you will be mind controlled and must be killed.

You can see how this leads to an interesting issue. Every person trying to bite must bite someone new, and you must kill Lana'thel before your raid becomes a big mess of mind-controlled vampires. The double damage from Essence will obviously help, but Lana'thel is definitely a DPS check in this regard. Try and assign everyone their bite orders before the raid -- it'll save some time later.

Your raid must all stand at least 6 yards from one another, although there is space for 10 yards if you're more comfortable. This is because of her Twilight Bloodbolt (insert your own Edward joke here). It hits its priority target and then splashes damage out to anyone by that target. It can target melee, which just kind of sucks for melee. Try and have your melee "spread out" as much as possible -- there's should be room at the 4 and 7 o'clock positions to keep range.

If you've got that down, you're ready for her air phase. Every two minutes, she'll bolt to the middle of her room and fear the raid. She'll launch into the air and start raining down a Bloodbolt Whirl. This is really functionally the same as her previous Bloodbolt. So everyone must immediately spread out as soon as they come out of the fear, in order to keep the raid alive. Since the entire raid is taking Bloodbolt damage, it's helpful that anyone who can heal does heal to make sure you live through the air phase.

The other stuff is easy. Shroud of Sorrow is just a big raid-wide damage aura that you must heal. Swarming Shadows causes fire to appear at your feet -- kite it away from the raid. Blood Mirror means that whoever is closest to the tank will take the same damage the tank does; it could be an OT, or just a very tough DPSer who can absorb the damage. Pact of the Darkfallen links players together, doing increasingly more damage until they all stand directly on top of one another.

In heroic mode, Lana'thel gains Presence of the Darkfallen. She gains additional damage for every member of the raid who is a vampire.

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Abilities

  • Shroud of Sorrow An aura of shadow damage that will affect the entire raid. It does 4.5k damage

  • Blood Mirror Causes the target linked to take 100% of the damage being suffered by the tank. The tank still takes the original damage.

  • Vampiric Bite This is the ability which turns a raid member into a vampire. They get a huge bonus to damage until they are forced to feed again by Frenzied Bloodthirst. If they don't feed, they become thrall to Lana'thel and must be killed.

  • Pact of the Darkfallen This is the raid member version of Blood Mirror. In order to ditch the debuff, raid members must stand exactly on top of one another.

  • Swarming Shadows Not only does the random target take damage from shadows, they spawn fire on the floor, which will do damage to other players.

  • Twilight Bloodbolt Bloodbolt nails the target for damage and then splashes damage to anyone who's standing within 6 yards.

  • Bloodbolt Whirl Being a stylish vampire, Lana'thel's "shadowbolt volley" is called Bloodbolt Whirl. It has the same splash effect as Twilight Bloodbolt.


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Tank strategy


Stand still and tank her. If you're the off tank, stand on top of the tank. This is not the most difficult thing you've ever tanked. (Or if it is, you're fairly hosed.) If you happen to have someone string fire underneath you, try not to stand in it. Make sure to have some form of shadow protection available.

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DPS strategy


Mostly, do a lot of DPS. But if you get linked via Pact of the Darkfallen, you should immediately get on top of your fellow linked players. Additionally, be ready to run the hell out of Dodge and away from the raid.

Your raid leader should set a "bite order." Move down the list in order of highest DPS, so that your best DPS is getting the vampire powers first. This will vastly increase your DPS and get you through the fight. At this point in raid progression, though, most raids seem to supply sufficient numbers without too much trouble.

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Healer strategy


Ironically, your strategy is a lot like the DPS strategy. Pay attention to Pact of the Darkfallen. Otherwise, prepare yourself for a lot of raid damage in this encounter. Be prepared to handle a lot of damage after every fear; you won't have long to top people off before another volley devastates your raid.

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Other resources


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